Anti-nuclear weapons activists condemned the possibility of a UT System bid to manage the Los Alamos National Laboratory at a panel sponsored by student group UT Watch on Tuesday.
"People at UT don't fully understand what Los Alamos does," said panelist Greg Mello, the director of a Los Alamos watchdog group.
Mello compared Los Alamos to a "prison" and said more than half of the laboratory's work involves manufacturing nuclear weapons, something that "will not greatly enrich academic life [at UT]."
The UT System Board of Regents voted in February to allocate $500,000 to bid on Los Alamos. Known for creating the atomic bomb that ended World War II, Los Alamos is the largest manufacturer of weapons of mass destruction in the world, Mello said.
UT Watch organized the panel to educate students about the kind of work Los Alamos does, said Nick Schwellenbach, UT Watch member and history senior. Roughly 30 students attended the panel, less than half of the audience Schwellen-bach expected.
The cost to bid for Los Alamos could go up to $6 million, UT System officials said.
"This money could be used for educational purposes," said Austin Van Zant, a UT Watch member.
UT System officials have staunchly defended their decision to consider bidding on running Los Alamos. Officials said they will look into finding a partner to bid with them in managing the labs, which would significantly bring down the cost for the UT System.
Charles Sorber, who is heading the bid to manage Los Alamos, told the Texan in February if they do bid to manage Los Alamos, the research opportunities it could provide will reap economic benefits for the UT System and Texas.
Schwellenbach said he contacted all of the Board of Regents members, UT President Larry Faulkner and several other UT administrators, and he invited them to attend the panel. Faulkner and regents James Richard Huffines and John Barnhill Jr. declined to come.
No other regents or UT System employees were present at the event.
The other two panelists were Chris Mechels, former Los Alamos employee and workers rights activist for Los Alamos, and Gary Chapman, former Green Beret and UT professor of public policy.
Both Mello and Mechels said the Los Alamos work with nuclear weapons can result in environmental catastrophes and raises safety concerns for the students involved in Los Alamos.
Chapman said before the meeting that he was concerned about how competition between the University of California and the University of Texas could create a bidding war that will have repercussions on UT faculty and graduate students.
Many students said they came to the panel because they opposed the UT System's possible bid to manage Los Alamos due to the financial constraints the UT System is facing.
"We need more financial restraint. We have better things to invest in," said Ryan Latham, a Plan II and psychology junior.
Although this is the first sign of opposition on the University campus against Los Alamos, government senior Eileen McPhee acknowledged that her boss, Rep. Lon Burnham, D-Forrt Worth, was also "monitoring the situation," and that he opposed the bid.
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